Creative Commons Workshop for Concordia Students

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If you’d like to learn how to get, collaborate on, and share open access research or creative content with Creative Commons (CC) licences, then you should register for my next workshop happening on Tuesday, 26 October (during Open Access Week 2021).

The workshop will help you get a better understanding of how to find CC-licensed materials, which you can use for research purposes, in presentations, and for a broad variety of creative applications. You will also learn about open access issues and the impact of using these licences for your own work.

Try the Engineering Academic Challenge (Concordia Student Event)

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The Engineering Academic Challenge asks students to figure out answers to a variety of interesting engineering questions by using databases with Engineering Village and Knovel. There will be an event at Concordia for engineering students to try the challenge (it includes food). Competing against universities from all over the world, you can also win some nice prizes.

On Monday, 23 October 2017 go to the Hall building, 7th floor student lounge area, between 11 and 1. Bring your laptop, use one of the computers there, or borrow one from the library.

Participating in the EAC is a great way to improve your ability to get effective search results out of Engineering Village, while also learning about interesting engineering problems.

Books to Help Engineers Communicate in a Business Context

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If you’re a student beginning work within a professional environment you’ll find that there are expectations people have around communications, which are particular to the workplace. A lot of books for engineers cover how to communicate professionally within a business context. These books tend to be oriented toward helping the reader learn skills for improving the way they communicate their own specialized knowledge not just to their peers but perhaps more importantly, to people that do not have the same level of specialized engineering knowledge. Continue reading “Books to Help Engineers Communicate in a Business Context”

Document Your Search Strategy with this Template

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While assisting students with their research, I often use a template I made to keep track of key concepts, synonyms, and to organize search strategies. Since it’s a good practice to record search strategies, I thought I’d make it easy for other people to get the template. It includes space to document the databases, journals, or other resources that you use as well as queries, dates, etc.

Download the spreadsheet template from the following links. Copy, modify, and re-use it as you need.

Open document format (.ods)
Search strategy template & simplified version

Microsoft Excel format (.xlsx)
Search strategy template & simplified version Continue reading “Document Your Search Strategy with this Template”

Adapting Standards for Climate Change

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Since I was just reading up on the new Canadian standard for zero carbon buildings, this other and related issue caught my eye. The European standards organizations have been working on adapting standards for the changes we’re experiencing and will be expected to experience with the climate.

They’re focusing on three sectors: transport infrastructure, energy infrastructure, and buildings and construction. Of course, obvious or not, climate change impacts all sorts of things, from temperatures that devices are designed to operate within, to electricity grid reliability, to withstanding extreme weather conditions, and much more.

To find out more about the CEN-CENELEC’s standards work, visit their climate change adaptation Web site. They have a number of free documents to download. Such guidance on adapting standards for climate change may prove worthwhile to have in mind while working with a range of other existing standards.

New, Canadian Zero Carbon Building Standard

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The Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) recently released a new, Zero Carbon Building Standard. They explained that the standard aims “…to make carbon emissions the key indicator for building performance.” It applies to both new construction and existing buildings through certifications for design (new), performance (existing), or both. You can download the full document (PDF) free here.

The standard’s main components cover greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency and associated strategies,  preparing for the future/renewable energy, and carbon from the lifecycle of the building materials.

This new standard contributes toward a goal of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from commercial, institutional, or multi-family buildings. The standard’s summary explains the CaGBC’s concern with current buildings’ performance because they expect a large percentage of these (over 80%) to continue being used in 2030. Additionally, the future lifespan of new buildings puts pressure to design for zero carbon emissions from the outset. This includes establishing techniques for offsetting the greenhouse gas emissions from the building’s energy consumption.

Much more information about the standard and the CaGBC’s Zero Building Program is available from the Zero Carbon Building Initiative web site.